TIBURON, CALIF. – This morning, I received a call and a note from a believer in the Metals Melt-Up we straddled starting in 1998. We were chatting about counter-party risk.

Madonna, we shall call her, and I used to joke back then that she was one of just eight folks on the planet who was putting their hard-earned salaries each week toward gold purchases. At the time, bullion was about $8.50 per gram and nearly every other human being on the planet was giving gold the boot (see below please).

Madonna at the time led what became a rush of folks both buying gold coins and gold mining investments and following our on-the-spot research in several reports I was authoring at the time. Please see ThomWatch examples here: 1. And here: 2.

Now that the planet is approaching $30 per gram, or $900 an ounce, Madonna Mia is still a happy Calandra camper, yet like most garage-loft investors she still is perplexed and dismayed by the devastation of gold miners’ market worths. Yet she jokes to this day, “Hey, I was one of the eight, one of the eight.”

The eight have become 80 and 88 and 8,888. They are the Melt-Up aficionados, now moving into Ticker Trax™ land, whose lives are like yours and mine here at Stockhouse and who manage to put aside a bit each month for a gold coin or two. Or a bag of ‘junk’ silver coins. Or a platinum one-ouncer, if you can find sovereign platinum coins that are not selling for $150 and greater premiums over the spot price of the metal.

“I can’t find any platinum coins,” says Van Simmons of David Hall, a coin dealer in Southern California. Van, who specializes in rare coins, was good enough two weeks ago to sell me a handful of gold U.S. Eagles for $50 or so over the spot price of an ounce of gold. The going rate at the time was more like $75 over spot, so with the $100 I saved I can look at buying a Flip-Mini camcorder for the kids.

Ticker Trax™ filling up

My work here and at our new wealth oriented service Ticker Trax™ concerns several areas for garage-loft investors in North America, the Middle East, parts of Europe, Latin America and Australia. First and foremost is making the case, and preparing our friends and subscribers, for $3,000 gold (and $5,000 platinum, which today is actually selling for less than gold).

There are other areas that my work has explored since I began covering financial markets and companies in 1986. One is life sciences and the long-distance promise of a) drug discovery companies such as Biocryst Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: BCRX, Stock Forum) -- which I own and am losing my shirt on; b) genomic tools developers and ‘personalized medicine’ pioneers of what is called molecular diagnostics; and c) the planet’s finest thin-crust pizzas. Please see ThomWatch article on auto-immune drug developers.

Backward spin continues for silver, gold

Yet aside from life sciences, my most important concern, in this space and in the subscription service Ticker Trax™, is to continue explaining why hard assets, especially gold and platinum, are headed several hundred percent higher in price during the next two years.

Precisely when is addressed as best as a human being can in Ticker Trax™ , whose third issue is now in the hands of that charter group of folks who might one day count themselves fortunate to have secured the service for what I am told is a reasonable price and at an opportune time.

The reasons why one must prepare for a world of far richer gold and other hard asset prices, including some agriculture, are all over the map, across the planet. Boiling it down to one or two words, the best two words in the current scheme of life and money flows, is useful: counter-party risk.

I certainly do not look forward to a society that is reluctant to exchange currencies because trust in those currencies is fading. Even fading just a smidgen. Yet this is how one explains the recent backward spins, as I call it, in the gold price dynamic. (The professionals call this backwardation: when the current price of a commodity such as oil is greater than the price one can receive in 30 days or 60 days or 90 days.)

Silver’s price, as indicated by the London Bullion Metal Association’s forward rates (click here), appear to be backwards today, for instance. The LBMA’s forward statistics each day are an interest rate on metals. When the rates go below zero, as in negative, the ‘forward’ return is in fuhgeddaboudid land.

Gold’s so-called forward rate is close to zero. As recently as September, the forward rate on gold was 3.0%. Counter party risk = greater willingness to accept gold, silver or other hard assets for services rendered or goods exchanged.

Madonna, one of eight people who had eight years to save the world, knew that in 1998. What puzzles me is why Mr. Simmons, the coin dealer, would actually take my dollars for his gold.

That is it for now. The third, secured issue of Ticker Trax By Thom Calandra™ is now available to paying subscribers. Speaking of stink bids, I am told the price of the new extreme wealth investment and lifestyle service rises to $249 from $200 yearly.

For those sitting on the fence, please take a look at the Ticker Trax™ discussion group on Stockhouse. 

On The Ticker Trax™

Ticker Trax By Thom Calandra™ explores planet Earth for those few stakes that offer the prospect of excellent, in some cases cosmic, returns. It is for those who are entirely at ease with stratospheric levels of risk. (Please see www.TickerTrax for charter sign-up.) Ticker Trax is for those who make select, high-octane investments and honor those stakes with on-spot research, patience and due diligence. The service is available via Stockhouse for $249 yearly, the charter member price.

Please see inaugural sample issue of Ticker Trax™.

HOLDINGS: Thom’s cosmos of holdings is listed for free Stockhouse members on www.Stockhouse.com under the “portfolio setting” for user TCALANDRA. He and his family also own recently minted gold coins. Thom is a long-term believer in bullion and platinum. For more ThomWatch, please click here.

THOM’S STORY: Thom Calandra helped his audience find value in a quagmire of investment choices. He also settled a valid complaint with the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission in 2005. Thom co-founded CBS MarketWatch, MarketWatch.com and FT MarketWatch in Europe. As the voice of Thom Calandra's StockWatch and The Calandra Report, Thom fancied $300-ounce gold before that metal became an investment rage. Thom visited bioscience companies, metals mines and scores of thin-crust pie joints across the planet in a search for profit, fashion and pizze de trippa gorgonzola. Thom's novel PABLO BY NUMBERS was completed in summer 2008.